Acknowledgments and Thanks
This book is a collaborative effort of several professors in the Wabash College Economics Department. Humberto Barreto and Frank Howland are the principal authors of this book, sharing equal responsibility for its content. In addition, Kealoha Widdows made extensive contributions to the book and Joyce Burnette revised many of the illustrations, examples and computer files.
Michael Einterz provided excellent error checking and test drove many examples. He added clear instructions for data sources and improved our presentation greatly. Matthew Schulz helped us polish the exercises and answers. The book also reflects comments and reactions of several generations of Wabash College students. We thank them all.
Scott Parris of Cambridge University Press deserves our gratitude. He took a chance on an idea far outside the mainstream and we hope it pays off. Thank you, Scott, for your support and helpful feedback.
We also thank our web site designer, Jeannine Smith. Her ability to write sophisticated computer code combined with artistic flair resulted in this excellent website that is functional and fashionable.
A major inspiration for our work is Statistics, by David Freedman, Robert Pisani, and Roger Purves, published by W. W. Norton & Company (3rd edition, 1998). We have tried to adopt the same approach to the study of econometrics that Freedman, et al. use in teaching statistics. That is, we emphasize the importance of the basic concepts and reject the memorization of boring formulas. We have taken the central metaphor of their book, the box model, and extended it to handle the classical linear model. Finally, we follow their visual and verbal approach to the material.
We would appreciate your criticisms and suggestions.